When Jeanne heard the Doctor state that Kal'tsit had been walking this earth for at least ten thousand years, even she was completely blindsided by the sheer, staggering scale of the ancient physician's age! It was a number so vast that it thoroughly transcended her capacity to fully comprehend.
What did ten thousand years actually mean? It was a span of time grand enough to watch towering mountain ranges erode into deep valleys, to witness vast continents swallowed by roaring oceans only to rise again from the depths. It was a stretch of history long enough for oceans to dry up and stones to rot a thousand times over.
Worse still, it was a duration that could easily shatter a person's fundamental will to live. It possessed the terrifying capacity to completely erode a human being until they became as cold and unfeeling as stone—a reality that, to any baseline human, represented the ultimate, most horrifying curse.
The human mind and spirit were simply not built to withstand the relentless, crushing wash of such immense time without twisting into something unrecognizable. Jeanne had already heard far too many dark tales of mortals who lived too long, eventually warping into the exact kind of abhorrent monsters they originally despised.
In Jeanne's estimation, even the most legendary, celebrated heroes in human history would inevitably suffer an unspeakable, deeply profound psychological distortion if forced to endure such a limitless existence. She truly hadn't expected Kal'tsit to have held herself together through all of it.
For a long time, Jeanne could only stare with wide eyes and an open, speechless mouth, thoroughly dazed by the revelation. The Doctor, however, wasn't the least bit surprised by this reaction; in fact, she had fully anticipated it.
"Dr. Kal'tsit... she really is incredible," Jeanne murmured, a sense of genuine, profound respect welling up from the bottom of her heart. Just on the basis that the woman could live through those endless millennia and still maintain her sanity and form, Jeanne considered her an absolute warrior.
Previously, she had assumed that even if Kal'tsit belonged to an older generation, she would at most be around a thousand years old. In a world like Terra—where plenty of unique individuals boasted lifespans far exceeding ordinary humans—a thousand years was notable, but not completely mind-blowing.
"That's nothing," the Doctor remarked, looking back at the stunned girl with a wry grin. "If we're strictly calculating by historic timeline age, you technically outdate her by a considerable margin."
Strictly speaking, the Doctor's logic was entirely sound. Jeanne had been born into a period of human history that predated the rise of Terra's current civilization by an immense margin—so immense, in fact, that the exact millennia were practically impossible to chart. It belonged to an incredibly distant, buried epoch.
Back in Jeanne's original era, humanity hadn't even mastered the fundamentals of interstellar travel. How many countless ages separated that period from the Doctor's own golden age? Of course, calculating Jeanne's age through that specific lens wasn't exactly fair.
"You can't really count it like that, can you?" Jeanne immediately protested, fiercely rejecting the strategist's math. "I've technically been 'dead' for how many countless years now? If we're talking about my actual age, we should only look at the years I spent alive before my passing, right?"
The blonde girl was quick to distance herself from the multi-digit numbers. After all, she still mentally viewed herself as just a nineteen-year-old girl; there was absolutely no way she was going to accept an astronomical age that required a string of zeroes. She was practically still a child!
Then again, looking at the ancient lynx, Kal'tsit carried herself remarkably well. Looking at her face, no one would ever guess the staggering weight of the eras she carried. Jeanne wondered if a phenomenon like Kal'tsit should be categorized as simply aging gracefully, or if she possessed genuine, eternal youth.
Brushing past the staggering reality of Kal'tsit's age, the two girls quickly let the subject drop, choosing instead to engage in a lighthearted, playful debate over how Jeanne's bizarre timeline age should actually be logged.
Jeanne could distinctly feel that the Doctor was deliberately steering the conversation away from the ancient physician, throwing up a smokescreen to keep her from digging too deeply into Kal'tsit's buried secrets. It was clear the strategist had zero intention of elaborating further on that particular mystery.
Recognizing the boundary, Jeanne politely dropped her inquiries regarding Kal'tsit, allowing the flow of conversation to drift naturally into safer, more casual topics. In any case, she had already extracted the core answers she had been looking for.
As their casual chatter continued, the Doctor casually dropped a specific geographical name that immediately caused Jeanne's ears to perk up—the moving city of Chernobog, located within the borders of the Ursus Empire.
"I've actually passed through that city before," Jeanne recalled, her brow furrowing slightly as she tried to match the name with her memories. "Is there something unusual hidden there? When I was traveling along the Chernobog route, I didn't see anything that looked like it jumped out of an advanced era."
Granted, she hadn't exactly conducted a thorough, room-by-room search of the mobile metropolis during her brief stay. But when she connected the dots and remembered that Kal'tsit had previously spent a significant amount of time operating as a high-level researcher within that exact city... the pieces started falling into place.
Jeanne knew the ancient doctor far too well to believe she would linger in a notoriously harsh, dangerous nation like Ursus for years without a massively important, hidden motive—especially given Kal'tsit's status as an Infected, which made living within the empire's borders an incredibly high-risk gamble.
"Of course you didn't notice it," the Doctor replied, a small, knowing smirk gracing her lips. "The most advanced piece of engineering in that entire city is buried right in their central power grid! Haven't you ever heard the rumors? Chernobog is a mobile city capable of full locomotion without relying on a single shard of Originium. It's the only one of its kind in all of Terra!"
The revelation was genuinely shocking. Jeanne had never imagined that a massive, sprawling fortress-city could function without the world's universal fuel source. Had the founders of that city managed to excavate the intact engine core of a pre-civilization starship?
"Hidden deep within that city is an advanced medical rejuvenation pod that was salvaged and researched long ago," the Doctor explained, completely bypassing any dramatic teasing to lay out the city's prize. "Even though it's technically a civilian, household-grade model from our era, it represented the absolute pinnacle of domestic medical tech at the time. The raw energy output it generates—even while sitting in a low-power hibernation cycle—is more than enough to satisfy the power demands of a modern mobile city."
The Doctor spoke with total candor, seeing no reason to hide the secret from Jeanne. She knew full well that a mystical being like Jeanne had absolutely no practical use for a piece of ancient medical machinery.
Jeanne's unique physical form didn't suffer from the mental degradation or genetic decay that plagued ordinary mortals, and the rejuvenation pod itself was hardcoded to interface exclusively with pure, baseline human biology. It was nothing more than a relic of the final, desperate struggle waged by the creators of old.
"A single household medical pod can provide enough residual energy to power an entire mobile city?" Jeanne asked, her eyes widening as her curiosity regarding their advanced tech flared anew. She was particularly fascinated by the underlying energy source—what kind of power could run continuously for countless millennia without suffering a catastrophic system failure?
At the same time, she didn't know whether she should marvel at the terrifying heights of the pre-civilization's tech tree, or pity the current nations of Terra for how drastically their technological baseline had regressed.
Suddenly, the pieces clicked together. Jeanne finally understood why the ancient, sky-splitting frequencies capable of delaying Catastrophes had vanished from the world; the modern mobile cities simply didn't possess the sheer energy capacity required to broadcast them!
And what kind of impossible materials had been used to construct that pod? How had it survived the relentless march of time without rusting into useless scrap? A sudden urge surged within Jeanne to drop everything, march right back to Chernobog, and get a firsthand look at this fascinating piece of ancient machinery.
As for trying to reverse-engineer it? Jeanne was thoroughly realistic about her own intellectual limits. If she tried to glean any usable scientific data out of a piece of advanced pre-civilization tech, she might as well try to read a book upside down in a language she didn't speak. Science and her simply existed in entirely different universes.
"What kind of energy powers it? Honestly, it's an incredibly technical, specialized branch of engineering," the Doctor chuckled, waving a dismissive hand. "Even if I spent hours breaking down the physics, it wouldn't make much sense to you. Just remember this: if you ever sustain a severe, life-threatening injury that ordinary Arts or medicine can't heal, go to Chernobog and lie inside that pod for a while."
That was the real piece of intelligence the Doctor wanted Jeanne to retain. That hidden chamber possessed a clinical healing capacity that left the medical advancements of Terra's modern nations in the absolute dust; for Jeanne, it was essentially a permanent, real-world respawn point.
As the two girls continued to exchange stories, the hours slipped away unnoticed until the deep silence of midnight settled over the landship. Checking the time, the Doctor realized it was getting exceptionally late. She began to shift her weight, preparing to head back to her own quarters to brew a quick bowl of instant noodles for a late-night snack.
But just as the strategist was about to step toward the door, a sudden question flashed through Jeanne's mind—a query she hadn't consciously formulated, yet one her instincts insisted she voice.
"Oh, right—was there a particular crisis that had everyone running around in such a panic today?" Jeanne asked, tilting her head. "If you guys are shorthanded or dealing with a massive headache, I might actually be able to chip in and lend a hand!"
Jeanne couldn't quite pinpoint why her mind was suddenly fixating on the day's frantic schedule, but her internal radar told her that paying attention to this specific matter would yield a significant benefit for her down the line.
As a Holy Maiden blessed with the gift of Revelation, Jeanne placed an immense amount of spiritual weight on these sudden, unprompted intuitive pulls. Experience had taught her that these strange feelings were often the subtle whispers of divine guidance pointing her toward a crucial path.
Stopping in her tracks, the Doctor paused at the exit and looked back over her shoulder. Her expression remained relaxed, showing no signs of defensive secrecy as she offered a casual, offhand reply:
"Oh, it's nothing that requires strict security clearance, honestly. We've been running an active excavation site nearby to recover a high-value pre-civilization artifact, but a rather bizarre, localized Catastrophe touched down right in the middle of our operational perimeter, which threw a bit of a wrench into our logistics."
The Doctor's features twisted into a thoroughly puzzled expression. Without needing Jeanne to pry further, she continued speaking, voicing her own confusion: "The whole thing is honestly a bit weird. When the Catastrophe actually struck, the entire impact zone happened to be completely deserted. Aside from blasting a massive, smoking crater into the terrain, it didn't cause a single casualty or logistical loss."
The strategist stood by the door, visibly lost in her own analytical thoughts as she tried to make sense of the statistical anomaly. Listening to the description, Jeanne instantly put the pieces together—it sounded exactly like a high-velocity meteorite impact.
"If it landed in an empty area, why did it cause such a massive panic?" Jeanne pressed, still failing to see why a harmless rockfall would keep the entire leadership structure of Babel running ragged for a full twenty-four hours. "Are you guys planning to mine the impact site?"
"Because that 'rock' happens to be a colossal, hyper-dense Originium meteorite!" the Doctor explained, her casual demeanor instantly snapping back into a sharp, dead-serious gravity. "The purity levels of the crystals are off the charts, and the sheer physical mass of the cluster is absolutely staggering! In all my years analyzing Originium deposits across this continent, I have never seen a single shard that large."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed as she laid out the geopolitical nightmare. "Babel itself doesn't have any real strategic use for raw Originium of that scale, but its sudden arrival has drawn the immediate, predatory gaze of every major faction and nation in the region. It's going to make our actual artifact excavation an absolute nightmare. To make matters worse, the meteorite struck square inside our legally leased territory—which means, by law, the exclusive mining rights belong entirely to us..."
At that exact moment, the Doctor's voice faded into background noise as Jeanne's brain completely derailed. Every ounce of her cognitive focus instantly locked onto those specific words: a colossal, hyper-dense Originium meteorite.
If she were to find a way to quietly absorb an astronomical energy source like that... just how much raw, boundless magical energy would it restore to her reservoir?
(Fumina: For anyone confused about the lore of this fanfic. The Doctor is part of an alien civilization known as The Previous Civilization. They came to this planet a long time ago and also created the Originium. But after realizing the effect it has on their race, they genetically engineered many demi-human species using the DNA of animals resulting in two distinct categories called "Ancients"(You're regular demi humans like cat people, dog people, etc. Any race that's tied to a real-life animal) and Elders(Races that are based on Mythical creatures like Dracos, Hippogryphs, Lungs, etc.).
As for the original inhabitants of this planet, they became The Sarkaz race. But some would later branch off to become Sanktas.)